5 ruthless business lessons from one week in NYC

Summary

My First Million – "5 Ruthless Business Lessons from One Week in NYC"

Hosts: Sam Parr & Shaan Puri
Date: July 7, 2026
Theme: Sam and Shaan break down five sharp business lessons Sam gleaned from an immersive week in New York City, accompanied by personal stories, practical frameworks, colorful examples, and plenty of distinctive one-liners.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Sam returns from a jam-packed week in New York City overflowing with business insights. Together with Shaan, he unpacks five key ruthlessness-infused business lessons inspired by meetings with high-level creatives, entrepreneurs, and market makers. They discuss the power of proximity, trust, marketing, city and team branding, and the art of uncovering “what does it really mean?” in business and in life. The energy is rapid-fire and idea-dense, with stories from NYC restaurants, influencer meetups, and candid takes about parenting, AI, and the enduring power of a killer slogan.

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Key Lessons and Discussion Points

1. The Power of Proximity (Start: 01:27–09:15)

• Proximity = Serendipity & Creative Velocity:
  Sam relays a meeting with Hasan Minhaj, who runs his creative team in close-knit, high-contact New York fashion. The magic, Minhaj argues, is found in "sticky notes and close quarters", not glass offices or trendy perks.
• Memorable Quote:
  “As soon as you walk into a creative office and there’s the hot secretary and the all-glass windows and the fancy matcha in the kitchen, you’ve already lost the plot. … It’s not about all that stuff. It’s about this.”
  —Sam recalling Hasan Minhaj’s words, [02:12]
• Balancing Contact and Quiet:
  Minhaj’s approach: “Stack" the people & meetings on high-contact office days, then disappear alone for uninterrupted “maker's time.”
  “When I produce pages, it’s like a magic trick. Money rains from the sky.” [05:04]
• Management by Wandering:
  Shaan shares his “wandering CEO” tactic—randomly dropping into meetings to pick up ground truth and serendipitous knowledge, balanced equally with deep focus alone.
  “It’s a barbell strategy… extreme high contact or extreme isolation, not the weak middle.” [08:31]

2. The Discipline of “What Does It Really Mean?” (09:52–18:56)

• Don’t Settle for Shallow Insights:
  Sam emphasizes the value of repetitive insights that resurface over time, pushing deep to extract the true learnings rather than surface excuses.
• Example:
  A dinner with Gary Vee’s right-hand man, Nick Dio, highlights the art of “picking up social slack”—subtly identifying and fixing what's off or missing in high-stakes social/business settings.
• Memorable Quote:
  “Every room you’re ever in, there’s some slack. The room is slacking in some way … I’m great at finding that social slack and picking it up.” [12:05]
• Translating Intentionality to Results:
  Through building intentional networks (like with streetwear founders), success often follows a process—without knowing exactly what the win will be upfront, you create a flywheel of connections and value.

3. City Brands and Team Culture (18:56–23:36)

• Some Cities Have Brands—Most Don’t:
  New York, Vegas, and San Francisco aren’t just places—"they have an aura, a logo, loyalists, haters, an identity.” Houston, for example, despite its size, lacks such a cohesive brand.
• NBA Teams as Brands:
  The Miami Heat (“Heat Culture”) and Detroit Pistons (“Bad Boys”) stand out for intentional branding; most teams are undifferentiated commodities.
• Memorable Moment:
  “When you’re not a brand, you’re a commodity. … What does it really stand for?” [19:41]
• Competitive Advantage:
  Strong city and team brands attract the right people, set standards, and create self-reinforcing flywheels of talent and culture.

4. Trust as a Business Asset (23:39–32:12)

• Jack’s Dining Club – Trust at Scale:
  Sam discovers Jack’s Dining Room (Yes, Chef), a creator whose food recs are so trusted that celebrities literally reroute their days around it.
  “He’s sitting on a gold mine of trust.” [25:50]
• Trust Will Be Scarcer Than Ever:
  With AI-generated personas and deepfakes, “we’re going into peak fakeness. … In a flood of endless content, people will gravitate toward who they trust.” [28:06]
• Kill Yelp:
  Sam pitches Jack: Build “Jack’s List” as a trusted, creator-driven Yelp alternative—a simple, definitive, personal recommendation engine, not a generic review aggregator.
  “How do you do a huge swing—a $500 million to $2 billion swing as a creator? You build the place people trust...” [29:14]

5. Marketing, Positioning & the Power of the Perfect Phrase (32:12–61:52)

• Marketing One-Liners:
  • Restaurant sommelier: “This steak is so soft you could eat it with a spoon.” [35:18]
  • Celebrity proof: “Taylor came here two nights in a row.” [36:28]
  • Denim: “It’s history you can wear.” [37:13]
• Understanding Desire:
  “You just gotta figure out what people want: the rich want status, the famous want privacy, the unknown want fame…” [37:25]
• Branding as Moat:
  Sam and Shaan stress that brand building, while hard and slow, is a generational advantage (cf. Apple: “simple, beautiful products”).
  • “Branding is a moat. … But it’s not a secret I know, so I’m not even going to write about it.” —Peter Thiel (quoted) [39:52]
• Copywriting, Empathy, and Quiet Thoughts Out Loud:
  Great copy (“I know why you offer to take the photo—so you’re not in it”) exposes unspoken truths, creates resonance and trust, and is rooted in deep research into a customer’s pain.
• Positioning & Category Design:
  • Indian sauce brand: Don’t market as “for making Indian food at home”—instead, “make chicken great again!” (unlocks a bigger market, reframes product use) [47:25]
  • “Positioning literally determines: which aisle in the supermarket are you in?” [50:55]

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Most Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “As soon as you walk into a creative office… you’ve lost the plot.” (Hasan Minhaj via Sam, [02:12])
• “Money rains from the sky when I produce pages.” (Hasan Minhaj, [05:04])
• “If you’re not a brand, you’re a commodity.” (Sam, [19:41])
• “When everything is fake, trust becomes gold.” (Sam, [28:06])
• “Taylor came here two nights in a row—that’s a marketing kill shot.” (Sam, [36:28])
• “You want to go after these thoughts that aren’t always loud, but when someone says it, you think: I didn’t know anyone else thought that.” (Shaan, [48:49])
• “Positioning is literally: which aisle in the supermarket are you in?” (Sam, [51:00])
• “The one word we try to own is: Inspiration.” (Sam, [38:28])
• Heartfelt: Sam applauding Shaan’s parenting; “You’re a great dad. … I finally found my mission in life.” (Shaan, [33:31])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction to Five Lessons: [00:48–01:26]
• Proximity and Hasan Minhaj Story: [01:27–09:15]
• What Does It Really Mean & Social Slack: [09:53–18:56]
• City/Team Brands & Culture: [18:58–23:36]
• Trust & Jack’s Dining Club/Yelp Idea: [23:39–32:12]
• Marketing/Positioning Insights: [32:12–61:52]

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Bonus Practical Marketing Frameworks

• Barbell Approach: Alternate between full-immersion collaborative sessions and pure deep work for maximum creative output.
• Repetitive Insights = High Signal: If a business lesson keeps resurfacing, examine it more deeply.
• Marketing One-Liner Test: Boil your value into a phrase that says in five words what most couldn’t say in 500.
• Brand = Culture = Magnet: The stronger and clearer the brand, the more it attracts and shapes its audience/community.
• Copywriting: Quiet Thoughts Out Loud: Dig for your customer’s “unspoken” pains; reflecting these honestly builds trust and resonance.
• Category Creation: Reframe your product to fit bigger, more resonant consumer needs (e.g., “make chicken great again” > “Indian meal sauce”).

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Tone & Style

Fast-paced, irreverent, practical, and story-driven—with plenty of admiration for elite operators in any field, a keen eye for the unspoken mechanics of business, and a healthy appreciation for great branding and copy.

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This episode is a must-listen for those seeking actionable lessons in creative teamwork, modern branding, and cutting-edge marketing, all filtered through the raw candor (and jokes) that have made Sam and Shaan podcast icons.

Transcript

[A]

Okay. I just got back from New York. I was there for a week. It was probably the most fun business trip of my life. And I wrote down five bullet points I have here that I think we could dive into. And the first one I want to dive into is I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like, no days off on a road.

[B]

Let's travel. Never lose. When was the last time you've been to New York City?

[A]

Oh, dude, it's been like 10 years since I've been to New York. Like, I just don't really go well.

[B]

You had a great time. That's good. Whenever people come here, I feel like I want to be a steward, where I want to be like, look, it's not that crazy to live here, and it could be awesome, and it's exciting. And I'm not like, one of these guys that's like, I'm not a Knicks fan. I'm not, like a New Yorker. I just live here. So I don't want to, like, pretend that I'm like, you know, that type of person. But I felt proud to show you around.

[A]

Yeah, and you did also. I think a lot of people had that in New York because it'd be like, hey, we're going to hang out with this person. And it would be half hangout, half city tour. Because there's A, there's a lot going on, and B, I think there's a lot of pride in. In, like, knowing the city and being a part of the city and bringing friends from other places to the city, which I think is. Is pretty cool. So one is trust. Trust as a service. The next one is marketing. Third one, proximity. Fourth is city brands. The fifth is. What is it really? Okay, so those are the. Those are my five. My five key phrases. You. Which one you want to start with?

[B]

Number three.

[A]

Proximity.

[B]

Yeah, we use that word all the time.

[A]

Proximity. So what do I mean by proxy? Proximity is being closely together. So I want to read you some notes from one of my. One of my hangouts. So I hung out with. With the comedian Hassan Minhaj, and he's been on the pod before. He's listens to the pod sometimes. We. We've gotten to become friends from afar, and I got to go to his office and hang out and meet his team and see how they work. I'm a big fan of watching how different people work, you know, go to their office, that sort of thing. He saw that me and Ben were together now. Ben Lives in Austin. I live in San Francisco Bay Area. So we're. We're not together. We don't work together in the same office, but him and his team do. In New York City, he commutes in from, like, wherever, Connecticut or something like that to the city.

[B]

To work is his main job. His podcast.

[A]

I don't know if I. I don't think he would say that. I think his main job is just being. Being a creative, of which a podcast takes up maybe half of his pie chart, and the other half is movies and. And his tours and things like that. So it's like Netflix specials, those sorts of things. So he said this thing. He goes, as soon as you walk into a creative office and there's the hot secretary and the all glass windows and the fancy matcha and the in the kitchen, he goes, you've already lost the plot. You've already forgotten what it's all about. And so he was like, he. He took. He's like. He's like, it's not about all that stuff. It's not about the. The glass and the. And the hot secretary and the matcha. It's not about any of that. It's about this. And he hands the me the yellow legal pad where he's handwriting his. His script, and he's like, it's about these sticky notes on this wall, and it's not even enough space, but we got to figure it out. Act one, act two, act three. This is the work. And he goes, I wanted it to be tight. I wanted us to have close proximity. He's like, it's a covalent bond. And he was talking about the power of proximity. He goes, you know what? I even take it further. He goes, whenever anyone's in New York, you're in New York right now. Come to the office, come hang. Come be a part of this. You need to work for a day here. Come work right here. Oh, you're shooting this movie. You need a place for hair and makeup. Do it right over there. He goes, because it's. When you're here and we're just doing things, you know, we. We get to sort of bump into each other. Like, you know, our atoms get to bump into each other. Good things happen. I pick up a little bit of what's going on in your world. I figure out a way to help you, you figure out a way to help me. And that proximity, I realized, is something I really miss. You get it a lot in San Francisco, in the tech world. New York, I would say, is even a level above that, because it's even denser. Everything feels very high. Proximity. Like, we did a different thing every hour. I would say, like, we were hanging with somebody, you know, for probably 90 minutes at a time, and then we would go do something else. There was no more than, like, 10 minutes of transit time between anything that we were doing. It was insane. We were just hopping from one thing to the next. And so I thought his note on proximity, proximity with your co workers, proximity with peers who you think are interesting and remembering, like, what is it all about? Is it about the space and the gloss and the remote work and all that stuff? Or is it about the sticky notes in the close proximity and smelling each other's, you know, deodorant.

[B]

Yes. But also, like, the time that you were here, you were going, going, going. You got nothing done. You know, I think that you were educated, you were inspired, which is important.

[A]

And.

[B]

And also, if I'm Hassan and I'm writing all the time, which I kind of am for this podcast, like, two hours before this podcast, I need quiet time. No one talked to me. I'm in a room by myself.

[A]

So he actually gave me some good inspiration for that too. So he goes, I'm here, you know, whatever, a couple days a week. And we stack it. Because I. I met up with him. I think I went to his office.

[B]

Like 10, right? Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It was like, I was with you at dinner, and then I was like, hey, we gotta go meet someone. They're like, what? And we went. I think I got to his office at 9. 30 or 10, was it.

[B]

People were there.

[A]

Him and his whole team was there. I thought he was just maybe hanging out for us. No, he was in a meeting. We waited for him for, you know, 20, 30 minutes, and then we. We hung out for another two, three hours. Then he took the train home. It was insane. He goes, no, no. These days, I stack him. I tell my. Tell my person, like, you know, top to bottom. Meetings, meeting meetings. Like, that's where we're talking. It goes. Because then the next three days, it's quiet time. And he said. I think what he did was he like. He's like, I rented a office space above Undone Donuts. Like the smallest little writers room you can imagine. He's like. And I go there when it's writing time. The other thing we said, he said was, he goes, we were talking about, like, maker's time versus manager's time, like the program essay. And you got to know which. Which schedule you're supposed to be on. Are you on a manager schedule where every 30 minutes, back to back to back, you know, you're context switching, you're meeting a different group, you're making decisions, or you're on maker's time, where you need long blocks of uninterrupted creative time that's might feel unproductive for an hour of it, but you needed that time to kind of get in the groove. And then, then you get it flow state and you start, start working. And he goes, I told my team, like, I need to be above this, Duncan. I need to be in that room alone. No wi fi, no nothing. Not just me and the legal pad. Don't even. I don't even take a laptop because I could produce pages. When I produce pages, it's like a magic trick. Money rains from the sky when I do that. So you got to give me time to generate these pages.

[B]

He's.

[A]

I don't know, I just took a lot of inspiration. When you meet someone who's a, a creative and an artist at the top of their field, it is. Feels very different than just meeting an entrepreneur. You know, there's a couple different, like, inspiring versions of this. Like if you walk into like, you know, Elon's factory, where he's building things, right? Or when we did the Mr. Beast tour, he's like, this is the largest soundstage in America. That guy's trapped in that room for a year. And we're building this set over here now.

[B]

Or an athlete, or when you talk to an athlete and you see their schedule and you see how they think about all these little things, how seriously

[A]

they take their body, their recovery, forget the workout, the recovery is impressive. And so there's these little pockets of world class people when they make you realize, like, oh, that's what it looks like when you dial up to 12. Whether it's athleticism, whether it's building, or in this case, it's about the creative process, creative work. And so that was pretty inspiring. So you have. I went to your office too, and got to see, you know, you built basically a place for proximity. In what ways do people underrate it? In what ways does it unlock you? Give me, give me something on it.

[B]

Yeah, so I need. I have a door right over here and it has a recording light on there. So no one. People know not to come in here right now. And I keep that on a lot, even when I'm not recording. But then every probably 40 minutes, I quit what I'm doing and I just walk around and people get mad at me. At my office, because they're like, you're just staring at me. And I'm like, no, I just want to like pop in on different conversations and listen. And I do that all the time. I think that there's a phrase, what's it called, like managing by wandering, where it's like, you know, like the CEO would like walk around like the factory floor with zero intention other than just to learn and see what's going on and occasionally find a problem and help solve it. And so I do that all the time and I love it. It makes me happy. And so there's a joke where you can kind of see it. We have like frosted glass now because they say that I would just like stare at people in the office. But like, I sometimes complaints. Yeah, sometimes I'll just like pop into meetings and I'll just sit and I won't say a word and then I'll walk out. And I love doing that because it helps me learn what's going on and how people feel and what people's opinions are. And I frankly love doing that. But I do require like lots and lots of quiet time.

[A]

Yeah, it's like a barbell strategy, right? You want to have extreme high contact ground truth, close proximity, serendipitous interactions. And then you want to have structured, isolated thinking time, working time that's like highly secluded and that seems to be the optimal. Is to be able to have the ability to go far in either direction and not just stay in the kind of like weak middle where it's like a lot of zoom calls and, you know, some slack messages and a bunch of light touches, but never really going deep on anything at any, with any people or any work.

[B]

And I also hired a cheap designer. My office isn't particularly fancy, but I wanted it to look like esthetically pleasing because I wanted to be here. So I took a little bit of a different route than him. What's the. What are the other few?

[A]

All right, so I had.

[B]

All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life. And the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30 day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have took me 10 years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show.

[A]

I had Marketing. I had Trust, I had Citibrands, and I had what does it really mean?

[B]

What's it really mean?

[A]

Okay, so this has been a long recurring theme. What I mean by that is everybody's typically looking for some new insight. I actually value a repetitive insight because it means there's more to learn. It means there's probably higher signal. Like if I hear if the same lesson comes up three or four times in a two year span, I add more weight to it. Whereas I think most people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I think that's how most people treat things that they've heard before. So I think on this podcast I mentioned a couple years ago, I was at an event with the guys from Tiny Andrew and his business partner Chris, who's much less well known. And I was sitting at dinner and this guy was talking about a business he had failed in. And he said the thing that every. Oh, you know, but, but I learned so much. And then Chris goes, what did you learn? And then the guy's like, oh, so much. He goes, so what's the main thing you learned? And then the guy was like, he's fumbling and stumbling. He couldn't really figure out what to say. Then he said something that was like, I don't remember the specific example now, but it would be like if I, if, if I had started a restaurant and my restaurant failed. And then I was like, I learned you shouldn't start a business when it's rainy season. And it's like, that's what you learned. It's like that. You didn't even learn the right lesson. And Chris basically pointed this out. He goes, I've talked to so many entrepreneurs. He goes, very rarely do I feel like somebody actually learned the right lesson from the thing. And this kept coming up, you know, this has come up for me many times. And so what does it really mean, I think is a very important question. I don't think people sit with enough. And so let me give you maybe a couple of examples. So we met up with Gary Vee's right hand man, Nick Dio, who we've talked about on this podcast for a very unique job. So Gary Vee, big public Persona, but he can't be everywhere at once. So he's got this guy Nick, who's his right hand man and he's basically an extension of Gary. Nick will host dinners for people that people in the Gary orbit who he thinks are cool, they just, they pay the bill, they bring cool people together. Gary's not even there. He met up with us. He's like, I just got off a flight from the con. What is it? Cannes Film Festival. And he was there all week in Paris and then was like, oh, you guys got to come next year.

[B]

And Gary, tell everyone that he went to Cannes.

[A]

I think Gary was there in this case, but it's like they needed more manpower. And so we were talking to him, and I was like. I think the simple explanation that everybody, you know, I kind of asked him was like, what does everybody think you do? He's like, oh, everybody thinks I basically just go party and, like, you know, drink and wine and dine with, like, you know, Gary. I said, what do you. So what do you really do? And it's very interesting when you ask somebody, what do you really do? And he goes, that's a great. He goes, you know, most people don't really ask that, but, you know, I think you're genuinely asking, so I'll tell you. And he gave me two stories that I thought were pretty dope. The first thing he said was, he goes. He goes, every room that you're ever in socially, there's some slack. The room is slacking in some way. So he goes, there's. There's a social slack that nobody can really put their finger on, but maybe the music's too loud. Maybe it's a little too cold. Maybe that guy doesn't know who to talk to. Maybe the drinks are. Maybe. Maybe there's no drinks. We all need some drinks. Maybe it's. There's two groups that don't really know each other. They haven't bridged the gap yet in the. In this room, maybe they will in three hours, but can I do it in the first 30 minutes? Because it'll change the way the night goes. He goes, there's always this social slack in the room. And what I'm really great at is identifying that social slack and picking it up. Finding a way to, like, stir the drink so that it tastes better of every room that I'm in. And people don't really even necessarily notice what I did, but it's. The goal is to elevate the experience for everybody in the room, but they

[B]

benefit from it in some capacity. And what's an example?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So he gave a couple of examples. So I don't know if you saw this. When the Knicks won the championship, the. There was a viral clip of. Of Jalen Brunson toasting in this small restaurant, and he basically was like, f. Wemby. And then somebody had record. He didn't mean for it, but somebody had recorded it and it leaked and it, like, got out and it went, like, mega viral. Well, that was happening. The Knicks, after their championship game, they went to Gary's social club, his place, Fly Fish. And they were in the room we were in where they have this, like, omakase sushi room. And that's. He's like, dude, that was the chair right there. Look, watch the video. This is. This. This is the exact spot. And so he's like, you know, through the relationship building I had done, when they decided, hey, we want a cool place to celebrate, they decided to come here. That's obviously very good for the brand of, like, if that's where the Knicks celebrate their first championship in 50 years, it's. It's obviously going to be very good for our restaurant chain or for our concept.

[B]

Right? That's pretty cool.

[A]

And it's good for our members club. So that's like, one example. He gave another example of, like, being very intentional. So he's like, if Gary starts to get into street wear and new fashion, then he's like, my job. He's like, then I basically go and I try to meet the 150 most interesting people doing interesting things in streetwear and fashion. I go into them with no agenda. I'm just trying to meet them, understand them, help them, do whatever I can with them. But now they're part of our network. And then, sure enough, like, one of them's raising money, we invested in it, and boom, it's this, like, you know, this hit product that. That comes out of. He's like, we didn't know going in that would be the win. Who knows? It could have been something else completely. But we don't. We don't have to know where. We know we have, like, five touch points. It's like, maybe that they're going to come on the podcast. Maybe it's going to be an investment. Maybe they're going to be friends. Maybe they're really insightful, they'll teach us something. Maybe it's that. Who knows what it is? I don't need to know what it is up front. I'll go in with no agenda and pick it up on the other side.

[B]

All right, everyone, I'm going to make this quick. So if you're an OG listener of my first million, then you might remember a guy named Ben Wilson. Ben Wilson was Sean and I's producer early on in the podcast. He also has his own amazing podcast called how to Take over the World, which we love and he's been battling cancer and he just announced it. We've known about it for a little while, but he just announced it on Twitter the other day. And the reason I'm talking about it here is because when he made his announcement, he did say that he had a GoFundMe that you should check out. You should look him up on Twitter. And he linked to that. But he also explained that he had stage 4 high grade neuroendocrine carcinoma, which I don't know too much about that, but he said it's in his brains, his bones, his lungs and his liver. And he's trying to get hold of a very specific and uncommon type of drug called tar la Tamabad. I'm sorry, I can't pronounce these things, but it's a very specific thing. And so if you have ever gotten value from my first million, and also if you are in this world, we're just trying to raise awareness for what Ben's going through, then you can look up Ben Wilson on Twitter. He has a 16 minute video that's quite inspiring where he addresses his diagnosis and what he's facing. And I find it actually quite inspiring. He's got this amazing line where he's like, you should live like you're living, not live like you're dying. And so you should watch that. But also if you do want to support him via his GoFundMe. And also he leaves his contact information. So if you're in this world where you can help him in any way, his information is all there. So look him up. Ben Wilson on Twitter. We'll also link to this in Spotify, iTunes and YouTube. Gary's easy to make fun of because first of all, I love him. I think he's awesome. I'm not making fun of him, but people give him a hard time online because he's like, loud and he's been doing content and he says silly fun stuff. And this is another thing where people would maybe mock, like, oh, he just hires this guy to go party for him. And so I want to acknowledge that, but I think this is awesome. I think that Gary has done so many things that have been a bit ahead and he. And he makes a ton of predictions and he's not right all the time. But like the fact that he's like been doing social media like he's been doing for forever and he was totally right. And then just like having this, I'm like, huh, this sounds like ridiculous and awesome and it could be very beneficial.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I told him, I said, this is the equivalent of. If you ever hear that stat, that LeBron James spends a million dollars a year on his body. And it's like, whoa, that's a lot like, you know, is he crazy? It's like, no, are you crazy? He's LeBron James. His body is the product. Of course he's going to. What an incredible return on investment. He's now playing in year 23 in the NBA. Like, I think that million dollars just unlocked another $40 million contract twice. Like, are you joking? That's obvious. So what is the equivalent in. In your niche is a very good. It's one of my favorite, like, kind of thought experiments, questions like, what would be the equivalent of spending a million dollars a year on your body for, for whatever you do. I think I've told this story about like my executive coach. He, he spent a million dollars of his own money learning from the best coaches of all the different modalities. Like, if somebody's really good in like, whatever somatic therapy, I don't even know what that is, but like, whatever, he'll go find the best in the world. He'll approach them and be like, hey, is there any way I get kind of two weeks of immersive one on one training in this? Name your price. And he did that with like, you know, 15 of the best coaches in the world over a period of two years and like spent a million dollars. And because of it, he's like, A, what a cool experience. And B, like, I made myself more valuable as a coach because I now, like, I'm well versed in different, different domains that I got. And I, I started with a deep dive with the world's best. Then I continued for years after that of my own self practice.

[B]

All right, go to number four. I think it was New York brands.

[A]

Yeah, City brands. So I think it's really interesting how there's only a few cities in the world that have brands. Like New York has a brand. New York has a look, it has a feel, it has a sound, it has an attitude, it has an aura, it has a reason to go there. It has like any great brand, it has loyalists who swear by it. It has haters. Like, I grew up in Houston. Houston has no brand. Got a lot of people, got a good size, economy. What's the brand like? It's like, yeah, it's kind of a good gas town. Kind of. What does that even mean?

[B]

It's, it's just that it's kind of new, like oil and gas is, like, a relatively new thing. It's only many. I mean, it's many decades, but, yeah, it's kind of new. But, like, Detroit, you know, has one. I think New York has one, but, yeah, a lot of places don't.

[A]

Las Vegas has a brand. San Francisco, Louisiana. Have a brand. New York has a brand. There's not that many places that have brands. And I think there's a. It's kind of a mission, you know? Like, I think if you're. If you're actually, like, trying to make a city attractive, you want to have a brand and be intentional about it. I actually think I told this to an NBA team owner, too. Very few NBA teams have a brand. And when you're not a brand, you're a commodity. You're basically saying, coming and playing here is just the same as coming and playing somewhere else. Now, there's a couple teams that have a brand, maybe because the city they're in, right? Miami, Louisiana. New York. The brand is really the city, not the team, but there's one there. There's been. There's been a couple examples of teams that have brands.

[B]

I'm not a basketball guy at all, but, like, I know that. Like, Was it the 76ers or the Pistons? Who was the tough guy? The Bad boys. The Bad Boys.

[A]

The Bad Boy Pistons is an example of a brand. They gave it a name. It was cool. They made merch. They brought players in that reinforced the brand. It became a thing. It embodied it. It stood for something. Some people hated it. They thought they were dirty. Other people loved it. They said they were tough.

[B]

Or the Fab Five in. In Michigan, I think Fab Five was an exact.

[A]

Exactly. Fab Five was another one. They wore all black socks, baggy shorts. Right. What does a brand do? It has a look, an aesthetic, an icon, a visual, a brand, a logo. And so the. The same thing. Right now, the only team I would say that truly has that kind of a. A brand is the Miami Heat. They have this thing that every reference is called heat culture. And say, oh, well, there's heat culture. And heat culture is basically like. It's kind of like Navy Seals. Like, when you come. You get weighed in every day with your weight and your body fat, and you have to be under a certain body fat or you don't get to play. And, like, a lot of other NBA teams cater to their stars, and, you know, they don't really. They don't want to, like, rock the boat. Whereas Miami's like, no, this is heat culture. This part of heat culture, if you came here, you should know what heat culture is all about. If you think about the best companies, the best cities, they have a culture, they have a brand. And then the people who get, there's people who get attracted to that, who come there for that. And when even people who aren't didn't come there for that, they will change their behavior to fit the culture, to fit the brand. I know that this place only rewards and respects people who are bold, people who take action, people who do xyz. Then I'm going to bring that version of myself to the party.

[B]

That's pretty cool. That's a good observation. I think UConn had that because I saw the 60 Minutes guy or the coach on 60 Minutes. He was like, people are like, well, winning is everything. He's like, at our culture, winning is everything. Like, we're here to win. And then I think SF has one.

[A]

SF has one. I would say it's a little less intentional. And it's not really. It's like there's the tech scene in SF and then there's sf. SF kind of hates the tech scene.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Despite it being the driver of growth in sf. And then there's the tax scene, which has its own little brand. But it just kind of like stood out to me that, like, I, I, I think it's hard because there's nobody who, like, it's not a company. Right. There's not like a. Yeah, but the

[B]

mayor has four years to kind of like somewhere.

[A]

Yeah, but like, you know, who's the mayor? And are they the kind of world class leader that can build this and then can you kind of hand it off from one person to the next? It's, it's a really tough thing, but man, when you have it, what an, what a competitive advantage. Because right, like, you recruit, you move there. And so did our other friends that we all visited. They all moved there. It's not like they were born and raised in Manhattan, you know, it's, it attracts talent. And when you attract talent, you attract certain type of people, you attract earning power, you attract all kinds of things. And then, you know, there's a flywheel that, that spins. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you. And it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft, campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice or all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

[B]

What about the number one thing? What was number one?

[A]

Trust. Okay, so one person I bumped into at Gary Vee's club or whatever, was this Instagram or creator called Jack's Dining Club. Do you know this guy Jack?

[B]

He's the. He's the hottest thing going.

[A]

What is the exact name? It's a dining club.

[B]

He's like. I follow him. I think he's 22 or 23, and he has tens of millions of followers.

[A]

All right, Jack's Dining Room is the. Is the name. And then he's got this brand called yes, Chef. So met this guy Jack. And, you know, Ben was like, oh, dude, I love your videos. Everyone's like, I love your videos. I. I was out of the loop. I didn't really know any of his content, but I started. I grabbed Ben's phone, I started watching some of his content. Pretty fascinating what this guy's doing. The core video hook of what he's doing is, we're here at the best sandwich place in Paris. This is a. And then he's like, he's got a sandwich. He's like, this is a cheese and mayo, Dijon sand, whatever. And he's like, the croissant. And he's like, dude, this thing is. And he takes a bite. He loves it. And this guy's brand is pretty incredible. Like, he has these things. He does. Now. Have you ever seen his, like, reserve club?

[B]

No, but I. He has a whole suite of brands called yes, Chef.

[A]

Go to his Instagram and watch one of the reserve videos if you can see it. Basically, it's these, like, you pay, like, a thousand or more than a thousand dollars, like, you know, say thousands of dollars to go as a group of, like, let's say, 10 on, like, an unreal culinary experience. Like, we get on a private jet, we fly to this place. On the jet, there's a. The. The best sushi chef is making, you know, omakase on the. On the plane. Then we land, we get the champagne. It's just like, some. In overly indulgent, like, food.

[B]

Like a dinner on the sand in a fancy beach.

[A]

Yeah, but, like, look who's there. It's like Machine gun Kelly, Leonardo DiCaprio. These are, like, fans of his content. They're like, I've seen your videos. I actually Tried that restaurant because I saw that you. You had. You said they had the best chicken sandwich in L. A. I drove an hour to go get there, and he's like, wow, that's incredible. Leonardo DiCaprio. Thank you for. Thank you for saying that.

[B]

Duty. And then it says, like, if you go to his Instagram, it goes to yes Chef guides. Yes Chef festival. Yes Chef reserve. Yes Chef supply. Yes Chef Run club. Yes Chef group. He has a whole, like, thing around

[A]

this whole ecosystem going, all right, so. So. So what was, I thought really interesting about this was just the idea of trust. So when we were. When we were in New York, there was these. Every place we went to was like, this is the hottest. The hottest steakhouse in New York. The hottest sushi. I was like, you got to. You got to stop saying that. These can't all be the hottest restaurant. How many. How many hottest restaurants in New York are there? It's this kind of word of mouth thing. And. And one thing I thought about was like, man, there's brand. If you think about just the general idea of if I really wanted to have great food, who do I trust to tell me where the great food is in any city?

[B]

Just like a. Yeah, I don't know, a smart friend.

[A]

Well, smart friend. But that smart friend has to be, like, well traveled, well versed. Like, you know who. Not everybody had this guy's job jacked. He's basically your boy who knows the spot in every city. And I thought, man, he's kind of sitting on a gold mine of trust. I think trust is going to be the thing that is in lowest supply over the next 10 years. Like, dude, every video I see on Instagram, I'm like, is this fake? You know, when I. Whenever I see, like an ad, I'm like, okay, that's an ad. And then I see a normal, funny video. I'm like, that might have been a deep fake. Yesterday I saw this insane thing where you can create like a. A UGC character. So it says a new era of influencing. Right? So, like, check this out. You see this girl?

[B]

Okay? So it's a. A pretty. They're all pretty. Like Instagram fluency realistic.

[A]

I don't know if you can see the detail, but, like, hyper realistic looking person, right? This is an AI generated person. But then it's like, it will. We can keep the character exactly the same. So the face, the eyes, the jewelry, the style, the hair. And so you have one character and it says one character, endless content. So, like, this is like catfish heaven, right? Like I'm going to be able to make this character that I'm going to be able to put her in every scene. She can be the face of my brand. She could just be an influencer on her own. She could do videos, she could do anything. And you're just going to be able to create a hyper realistic looking person, post content for them, and no one will ever know that this entire thing is fake. And like, even if this is only mildly impressive to, this is very impressive to me. But if this is mildly impressive to do, cool. Fast forward 12 months. Like, we're going into like peak fakeness around the world. And what happens when everything is easy to fake? Trust becomes incredibly important.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

I think podcasters like us are well positioned because people know we're real human beings. And like in a flood of endless content, you're just going to gravitate towards people you trust. I think this guy Jack is sitting on a gold mine of trust. So where do you get food recommendations today? Yelp. Yelp is the default answer. And it's like, dude, Yelp sucks. I've never seen anyone be like, God, I'm, I love Yelp so much. Like, you know, I trust Yelp so much. Yelp. Yelp always knows the best place to go when I want ramen in my city. And so I was like, this guy, I pitched him this idea. I was like, look, you're selling hats. Wonderful. You're selling these, like, thousand dollar, you know, fun private jet experience. I'm sure that's a blast. But it's, it's obviously not that scalable as a business. I was like, you should create Jack's list as Yelp. You should try to compete with Yelp. You should create an app that I just say, I want the best burger, the best pizza, the best taco, the best ramen in any city, and you better have it. And it's your pick. It's like, here's number one, maybe number two or three, and that's it. That's the whole app. And I was like, that is what you should do with this trust is you should go after Yelp.

[B]

Is he gonna do it?

[A]

And then him and his business partner were like, ah, yeah, but blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I was so convinced. I was like, actually, you know what, you're right. How about I just build it and you just let me use your name and face? All right, you just give me, you just give me the. I'll give you 20. You don't believe in it. Great. I'll give you 10, 20%. Like, let me build this. Because I'm so bullish on this idea that, like, he should create this as the. How do you do, like, a huge swing? Like, 500 million to $2 billion swing as a creator? Like, every video you have gets a hundred thousand likes of people who are, like, wishing that they could go to this place. That's incredible. That's like, you know, that that's an unbelievable. You know, 10 million people are watching you eat this froyo in Vermont. If that's really the best froyo in Vermont. Like, you should just create your list and curate it and have it be the trusted place. Way more trusted than Yelp. I think trust is sort of like, you know, gold right now.

[B]

I've been. What's the thing called sorrow? What's the. The music one Suno. I bought a subscription to there a while back, and, like, I taught my daughter how to pee on the potty because we have a song we made this artist called Noah Flan. You know, he's kind of like Noah Kahn. He. But he's like, I don't know. The cheap version. We call it Noah Flan. And we have a song called Let it Flow, and it's him singing, like, what's the Elsa song?

[A]

Let it go.

[B]

Let it go. And it, you know, it goes.

[A]

Let it flow.

[B]

Let it flow. Let the pee fall from your body. Let it flow. Let it flow. Pee into the potty. Let it. And it's like this, like, folk song, and it's so whatever.

[A]

Is it on your phone?

[B]

Play it. Yeah. Let me see. Hold on. Listen.

[A]

Pull those pants right down. Plant your feet and sit. Take a breath. Relax. And here it comes. That's it. Let it flow.

[B]

Let it flow. It's great, right?

[A]

What a hit.

[B]

Holy.

[A]

I'm gonna miss Rachel.

[B]

So I. I created Noah Flan because I'll be like, hey, you know, I could tell she has to go to the potty. I'd be like, hey, do you want to let it flow with Noah Flan? And, like, well, you know, we'll sing. And so I'm creating. I'm creating a series of songs for, like. I use pseudo all behaviors for, like, all behaviors. And, like, because I hate listening to, like, the same Moana song over and over again. I. I like, like, folk music. I'm like, I'm gonna. Just gonna make something that I think you might like, and I will like. And so now we sing, like, let it flow. Let it flow.

[A]

A great Suno prompt word. By the way, because if you say folk, it becomes almost too. Too folky. Americana. Just use the word Americana. It'll add a little bit of that edge you want in it.

[B]

Well, now I have Noah Flan. Like, he's like a saved character. And so I actually like, I made a YouTube page for it and I'm like, uploading his songs. And. And so anyway, like, AI has been awesome. I know that we can hate on it, but like, that's not real artists. But I'm telling you what, we love Noah Flan. We say no, flat at our heart. What was.

[A]

You don't know where it's going. It starts like, put your pants down. It's like, what's going on?

[B]

Well, we have this. There's this company called Live Live. Love Every. You know? Love every.

[A]

Yeah, like the toy company.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's like a toy company and they, like, send these books and we got. We bought a book for them on potty training. And like, they tell a story about a kid going poop. And like, he's like, oh, I ate these pancakes. My stomach is growling. And then they show them on the toilet and then they actually show the poop. And I'm like, that's disgusting. And it totally worked. It totally helped her. And so what I'm learning is that when you, like, have to, like, teach children things, you need to be pretty explicit in the stuff that, like a grown up doesn't necessarily want to talk about. I talk about it anyway and it like, goes into, like, detail. Like you have to push and it falls out of your body. Like, these things actually helped her. And it's pretty freaking gross, but, like, yeah, that's what I'm doing.

[A]

Noah Flaunt, by the way, I was. I was very touched and impressed by seeing you as a dad in New York. I also want to give you a shout out. You're a great dad.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

I don't know if you know you're a great dad. I think you do. I think you actually do know.

[B]

I work really hard at it. I try really hard at it. I try so hard. I think I told you when we. I had kids, I was like, I finally have found my mission in life. I work really hard at being a good dad.

[A]

Yeah, you were like, what did you say you learned from your mom? You said, talk to them like they're adults and feed them like they're adults. And.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, at dinner I was sitting next to your daughter and she was like, pass the green beans. And I was like, what's happening. I was so stunned. I didn't do. And then she's like, green beans. And then I gave it to her.

[B]

Well, I just remember, like, growing up and seeing people and I'm like, why does the kid menu exist? Like, I'm just going to give them the same. Like, we're just doing the same thing.

[A]

Yeah, you're a great dad.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

All right, so what was my other one? Okay, Marketing. There was some great one liners that the marketing nerd in me loved. I just want to say. So we were at this. What was the name of that? Like, fancy steakhouse something.

[B]

It had the number 86 in the title.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, like the. The 86 or whatever. There's some. Some restaurant really hard to get into.

[B]

Great at restaurant.

[A]

Great restaurant, great food. And the waiter brings out a box, like a treasure chest. And he's like, gentlemen, have we dined here before? And we're like, no, not really. And he's like, oh, well, you're in for a treat. And he opens up. He starts to open the treasure chest, but he doesn't open it just yet. And he's like, can I tell you the story of. You know. And we're like, yeah, please. And he's like, so we. And he tells a story about how this restaurant, which is in New York, owns a farm in like Melbourne or something in Australia, and they source their own wagyu beef. They raise them. They, you know, they only feed them, you know, probiotics and skittles or whatever.

[B]

Whatever they feed them. He was like, it was kind of funny. He goes, about three weeks before we take their life, we feed them macadamia nuts and butter. And that just really tops it off.

[A]

And he's like, he's like. And so the meat, the steak, just so you guys know, almost like a warning. He's like, just so you guys know, when the steak comes, gotta be incredibly soft. You can eat it with a spoon. Like, whoa. Steak so soft you could eat it with a spoon. I was like, damn, that was a bar. So I just started writing down, like, you know, just. I wrote that one down. I thought, well, that's a. That's a marketing kill shot right there. I kind of love that idea because again, how do you say in five words what somebody else could try to convince you of in 500 and still not succeed at?

[B]

He did the same thing with the knives. He opened it up. He goes, you see these steak knives? These aren't normal steak knives. These steak knives are from 1930, which is the era that we. This building was Teddy Roosevelt steak knife. Have you heard of Al Capone? He ate here. This was his knife.

[A]

Like, it was beautiful on that one still.

[B]

Yeah, it was. It was great.

[A]

And then we were like, but what about the spoon part? Was that it. Was that a figure of speech? Okay, so. So that was one. Another one again in the restaurant space. Because again, the restaurant marketing is off the hook here. This one restaurant's claim to fame, they go. And three different people told me the same thing about this restaurant separately. They go, taylor came here twice in a row. I was like. And so they make. You have to.

[B]

Taylor Swift two nights in a row. That's the line.

[A]

Taylor. Taylor came here two nights in a row. And I was like, damn, that's another kill shot. Like, she forgot to tell you this place is great. Is. Taylor came here two nights in a row. And I thought, wow, okay. That's in the pantheon of, like, great, you know, one liners. That said, that says a lot. Another. Another one. You gave me this one. I was. I was asking you about your denim collection. I was like, so what. Why. Why the denim thing? And you were like, I just. You started talking about it, you go, it's like history you can wear. And I go, is that their slogan? He'd go, no, I just said that. I was like, that should be their slogan. I thought that was an incredible line for whoever's the, you know, the higher. The who's the power. Power that be in the. In the denim world. But they need to. They need to give you a little royalty and take that line.

[B]

Yeah, like Levi's can make, like, you know, instead of saying, we make it like they used to make it, it's like, you know, where history, like, yeah, I think that's actually a golden one.

[A]

And then I was talking to somebody else who has been incredibly successful at marketing. And I go, what's the. What's the trick? What's the trick for what you're doing? How did. How did you pull this off? And he goes, everybody wants something. You just gotta figure out what it is. The rich want status and praise. The rich and unknown want fame. The famous want privacy. He goes, so I just figured out how to create products for each of those use cases. So he's like, for the famous people, I gave them privacy. For the rich, but unknown, I gave them a pathway to fame. For the successful person who's got it all, they still want access into the right rooms and they want praise. And he's like, you just gotta know who you're selling to, because it'll tell you how to sell it. And I thought, okay, that's pretty good. And I've heard this before in other versions. It's like, you sell a mom safety, you sell the busy parents time, you sell the woman youth, you sell the male power. You basically, you gotta know, kind of like, what's the one word you're ultimately selling to a person? Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like the one word of this podcast that we try to sell is inspiration. And so we're going to talk about hundreds of different people, hundreds of different cool things they've built, hundreds of different ways to be successful, hopefully, so that you are ultimately inspired to do some badass shit yourself. Like, this is just a podcast where we shout out people doing things that we think are pretty badass and therefore hopefully inspire somebody to do a badass thing in their own, their own version of their life.

[B]

I, I know I have felt this way, and I still feel this way, even though I know it's wrong. That branding and, and, and marketing, but not marketing. I think everyone understands direct response marketing. Like, I put this much money in, I just do the thing that gets the highest click, the click through rate and I click it. That's sort of like, that's fine and everything. But I think that like the great people understand that branding and marketing. When I say marketing, I mean like brand marketing. It's not sticky. And then I remember thinking like, well, Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie. That's not branding. Of course, obviously it is branding. But I was like, he's, it's all about utility. And then I read Peter Thiel's book, What's it called? 0 to 1, 0 to 1. And he talks about secrets and he talks about like, what's your special sauce? And it's so funny that Peter Thiel, he did two things that were interesting. He said, branding is a moat. Branding is a secret that you can know. And then he goes, unfortunately, it's not a secret that I know, so I'm not even going to write about it. That's like, do you remember that part of the book?

[A]

He's like, he acknowledges, he's like, I underestimated it. Now I've come to appreciate it. I still don't know it or how to do it. Can't tell you about it.

[B]

Yeah. He's like, I don't know anything about it, but I know it's real. And then we had Aaron Levy on the podcast. Aaron is a CEO of a company called Box, which makes enterprise Cloud software, you could dismiss that as being boring, whatever. But he's immensely successful. And we asked him what books he likes to read. He was like, if you're going to read any business books, just read these four or something like that. And he listed off four books. He's like, if you read those you'll, you're going to be amazing. And the first book that he said was a book called Positioning by this guy named Al Trout, I think his name is. I think he also wrote the 22 immutable laws of marketing of which Tim Ferriss, that's like one of the only three books that he always says, like just read this one. And I just have noticed that when you're telling these stories, I am in my head, I'm like, I, I'm taking notes right now where I'm like by

[A]

the way, it's Al Reese and Jack Trout.

[B]

Sorry, Jack Trout and Al Reese. My big. The takeaway that I've. You said you like repetition. A repetitive thing that I find myself is getting into the day to day weeds of my business and thinking, well, what's the ad click through rate. Okay, what if we just pointed a red arrow at this guy's face? It's going to get a higher click through rate. What if we did this? But it's somewhat. It's these things that appear to be irrational that aren't irrational at all that have the biggest needle moving difference. So making your brand associate with one word in the same way that Volvo does with safety or Lamborghini would do it with like flashy or Ferrari with fast whatever or these other things that don't have an ROI right away like taking someone and saying here's the stake. You see this steak right here and then telling the story. You say that into in a meeting where people only care about numbers and they're like huh? But just make a cheaper steak and just sell it at a higher margin, please. And I just think that when I'm hearing you tell the story, it's a reminder that I need to care about these things significantly more than I do. And I think probably everyone should.

[A]

It's incredibly hard to do and it takes a long time and it takes faith and it takes a leader who I think has that core insight. Remember that? Kind of back to my point of like what does it really mean? What is it really? Like, what is it really? What is Apple really? Why do we buy Apple, right? Because we're buying some version of design or simplicity, right? That's the positioning Apple still has over Everybody is that they make simple, beautiful products. So I think that you have to really like to distill, distill, distill, distill, distill. I remember I was talking to Hormozi once and I go, what's your brand? And he goes, oh, my brand, Business. And I laughed. I was like, business isn't a brand. I was like, that's just a word. He goes, I want to own the word business. He goes, and then, you know, he said this. I don't know if I would agree with this, but he's like, grant Cardone owns real estate. I want to own business. I think what he meant was, like, in the world of, like, YouTube and content, I want to be the guy. When you think of business and right or wrong, I thought there's incredible power in the focus and simplicity of trying to own a single word. And, you know, you could disagree and say, why no, that doesn't capture everything that we do. And no, no, no, we want to. It's more nuanced than that. And it's like, yeah, but you don't really achieve anything when you try to spread it all out too thin. Right. When you do the peanut butter strategy, you're spreading it all across the bread. And so I think there is a lot of value in trying to say, well, if it was a word, what would the word be? And if it was a word, is that the word other people would associate with us right now, or is that just what we say internally? And if that was a word, like, are we doing that everywhere or are we only doing it in this one area? And unfortunately, you don't usually like the answers to that stuff.

[B]

There's like that quadrant of like, urgently needed or not urgent. And then above it, it's like impact versus low impact. And like, there's this quadrant of like, it's not urgent, but it's very impactful. And that's like the thing where you probably should spend time on, but you don't. This is like one of those things.

[A]

Right? Right. Those are all the marketing. Actually, there was one more marketing one that I think is pretty cool too. I'll give you this one too. So we had dinner at probably the best Indian restaurant I've ever been to. If you've ever heard of Gymkhana, Gymkhana is like this really famous Michelin star restaurant in London. They have a sister restaurant in New York called Ambassadors Clubhouse. I think we went there with. With our friend who. Who runs their. He doesn't run the restaurant group, but they. They've launched a sauce line. So, like, you know how, like, Carbone started as a famous restaurant? Their sauces, Rao's, I learned it's not Rao's. Rao's, they did the same thing. And so this guy's doing it with Indian sauces. And so, great dude, great dinner. We hung out and, you know, he was telling me about the business, and I had actually passed on investing on this early on for one reason, which was I was like, I don't know how many people cook Indian food at home. Like, I get why pasta sauce is going to sell a lot of units because people make a lot of pasta at home.

[B]

Well, how did you. How did you come across this one? Because this isn't. That's not in your wheelhouse.

[A]

A friend had invested in it and sent it to me, and I should have paid. I should have dug in more. But I also didn't really respect the story of this restaurant. So again, the story comes before the sauce. And what's the story here? So same sort of Taylor came here two nights in a row type of story. Like, oh, you know, XYZ celebrities are here. The restaurant, I think, has a hundred thousand person wait list. This is an insane number. Like, getting a reservation there is, like, impossible. The. The story of the group there was basically, it was like one guy, he partnered with a chef, and the restaurant wasn't doing so hot. And so he decides, even though he's got no culinary experience, he's not a trained chef. He fires the chef, goes into the kitchen and takes over. The kitchen is like, we're gonna figure this out. Nine months later, they had a Michelin star, which is unbelievable. That's like, if I decided to play in the NBA, and in nine months, I was like. Or like, you know, the World cup, and I'm playing in the World cup next, next, next cycle. Like, it's insane to be able to do that. And so they. They pulled the sauce.

[B]

Ah, yes. I've seen this. Oh, my God, it looks amazing.

[A]

And so foods. Food's unreal. You should go. You should definitely go. So I was talking about the sauce thing. I was like, yeah, I was like, I just didn't think people were cooking Indian food that frequently at home. And he goes, oh, no. This is where Ro really helped us out. So there's a guy who came on our podcast, Rohan Oza. He's a guy you might have seen on Shark Tank. I think we were the only podcast he's ever done. And it took. It took a lot of, like, Twisting his arm to get him on. But he was amazing. He started, you know, he was involved in making Smart Water a success. Vitamin Water a success. Poppy soda, which I have right here on my desk, like, poppy a success. So he's been just a killer with brands, tons of brands, by the way. Those are only like, three of, like, a dozen brands that you'll find in grocery stores that this guy's been, like, you know, early and big on. And I think Ro is incredibly gifted when it comes to. To, like, what is it really? Right. Because when he. When he talked about this Poppy thing, it was like, I think when they started, it was like apple cider vinegar as a. As a drink supplement.

[B]

And he was like, mother's miracle or something.

[A]

Or he was like, we need to make clean soda. He's like, I grew up in Zambia drinking Coke and Fanta and soda. He's like, we need this to taste like a Fanta, but be good for you. And he's like, I think that's where the. Where the market is. And so similarly with Jim Khanna, he goes, we're gonna make chicken great again. He's like, what's, like, what? He goes, it's not about use this when you're gonna cook Indian food once in a blue moon at home. It's of people who eat meat. 85% of their meals at home are chicken.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And what we need is for our sauce to make your chicken taste good and be less boring. Cause it does. You add this sauce to our. To your chicken, your chicken's gonna taste phenomenal. So it's not about the one day you're going to decide to make Indian food for. For all your friends and host an Indian food thing. Like, who does that? That's pretty tough. It's pretty high risk. What we need to do is make chicken great again. And I was like, it's that sort of marketing genius that you need. That can be the difference between this being a really niche, fringe thing to being worth, you know, $3 billion, you know, in five years. It's like, that insight executed well. A lot of investors say they add value. That guy added value by, like, giving you, like, the. The point of highest leverage to refocus the entire company around.

[B]

This is awesome. I'm looking at their website, by the way. That's like, something that you'd make fun of, like, with a guy, like, giving a TED Talk. It's like, we didn't stop there, you see, we moved the office and, like, put the couch from here to here. It's like, what do we have in

[A]

common with our ancestors from cavemen to make our own?

[B]

Like, what? But it didn't make sense. And I'm like. Because what's funny is, like, when you're copywriting, you want to use such detail that the person feels it in their bones. So, for example, if you're selling, like, a weight loss thing or a gym product to a woman who's a little overweight, you're like, I know why you always offer to take the photo when you're with your friends.

[A]

Oh, that's a good one.

[B]

I know how you feel. It's like you want to go after these thoughts where they're not always loud, but they exist, and they're silent enough that when someone says that, you think to yourself, I didn't know other people thought that.

[A]

That's an incredible example. The quiet thoughts said out loud. So true. People want to feel seen and understood. And some of the great marketers, they describe this, they say, if you could describe the problem in such great detail that the person feels completely understood, they will trust you fully that whatever solution you speak next, because you understood the problem so well, they now believe that you understand the solution equally well, whereas everybody else just sells the solution.

[B]

Yeah. So you have to think. You have to. Like, this is the point. When you're. When you're copywriting an interesting idea, there's this thing called, like, general knowledge, and then there's specific knowledge. And general knowledge when you're doing copywriting is when you spend weeks just learning all about the industry, all about, like, stuff that may not even apply to it. Exactly. And. And then specific knowledge is when you learn about exactly how the product works. But you need that general knowledge to understand a vague idea. So, for example, if you're doing, like, gym work or, like, a weight loss supplement, you know, eventually you'll get to the specific knowledge where you're like, okay, so, like, the body loses weight by doing X, Y, and Z, and this product helps you by doing whatever. But the general knowledge is just talking to women and being like, so how do you feel? Like, well, I feel like fat or whatever. Like, you're all right, but tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. And that's how you come up with these ideas where you're like, she said this, but this was below the iceberg, so I had to dig deep. And I've noticed that this is like a common thread. Therefore, that's the perfect thing that I can use in my marketing. So when you said that you need to make chicken great again. Okay, that's. That doesn't mean anything. But when you said everyone wants to eat chicken because it's healthier, but it's so boring and bland, and you need a good sauce for it that, like, hits. Cause I eat chicken all the time. I'm like, I'm so boring at this shit. I don't want to eat this anymore. And so this is like a classic copywriting, marketing shtick of, like, general knowledge and learning how to.

[A]

And positioning. So literally, the positioning extends because it's. You know, what. What. His makes chicken great again, was actually a strategy. It's not the marketing. It's the strategy. And the strategy basically then is paired with the positioning, which is, is this a sauce for cooking Indian food at home, or is this a sauce for having really flavorful, delicious chicken? Two totally different positions, and then that extends. Which aisle would you be in in the supermarket? Because there's aisles for pasta sauces and Asian ethnic sauces, and then there's. There's aisles for toppers, you know, marinades, sauces, things that you put on meat. And that's where you see, like, that. But like, Japanese barbecue sauce or whatever. It's an example where, like, I don't think a lot of people were really that into. I'd like to just put. I'm really looking for whatever this umami, savory Japanese sauce is. But if I'm looking for some bar, you know, some. Some kind of Asian barbecue sauce to put on my food, my. On my chicken, that sounds pretty good. And it's in the right aisle. And so the positioning literally becomes physical in the aisle. And then you. Then you get down to, like, the actual, actual marketing. And then you say, oh, well, we should probably market to people who are eating a lot of chicken. Maybe that's people who are trying to be healthy right now. But, you know, the seven days a week of plain, you know, chicken breast is getting pretty old for them. What if one day a week, they were able to add our marinade or add our sauce on top, and actually it only adds 100 calories, but, damn, that thing changes the whole meal. All of a sudden, it's popping off. And so then it becomes an actual marketing strategy.

[B]

I did this with Hampton a bunch where I was like, what do people fear about building a company? And it took me forever, and I'm like, I'm still working on it, but one of the emotions that I'm trying to get at is when you're building a company, the biggest fear Oftentimes is not. Like, once you have a business that already has a couple million in revenue, it's not like, is this going to fail? It's like, I started this at 32. Am I going to be 42 years old and be like, this thing barely grew and I just wasted a decade on something where I could have been working on a different opportunity, and I just blew it all. And like, that is like the fear for where, like, I'm thinking about, for some of our marketing of, like, well, everyone has that fear. And you don't talk about it out loud, but you like fear. Like, I should do this other thing and this other thing, and I'm always fearful of that. And so Hampton helps by giving you a room of peers who could help you make big 50 million dollar decisions, not by yourself. And so you actually have, like, peers around you. But like I said, I spent a lot of time thinking about, like, these phrases and words that you can use that aren't spoken often, but when they are, people just jump.

[A]

Well, I like the phrase $50 million decisions. Just as that had resonance for me. Let me give you one other example that's kind of in this, like, quiet thoughts said out loud. So right now we're in a big, like, decluttering mode in our house. Like, we're just like, getting.

[B]

Oh, you had a great line. You. You had a great line for that. By the way. You made a joke. You're like, I'd rather move than declutter this place.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I. We almost are like, we just need a new house. We need to start over. Like, it's that bad.

[B]

Everyone feels that way. It's like, I'd rather. That's a really good one. I would if I was like a moving company or a cleaning company.

[A]

Well, my wife has started. She goes. Because I was like, what. What's gotten into you? Like, you're. Every day, you're like, just. I used to really struggle to be like, hey, let's get rid of this. This is junk. We don't need this. And I used to do that. And then she would hang on to it either for sentimental value. No, we do need it once in a while. No, we paid a lot for that. And like, I'll sell it. I'll get. I'm going to do something with it. I don't want to just throw it away. All these reasons for hoarding. Right. And so she didn't view it as hoarding, and then she didn't like when I called it hoarding.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So that was like, our. We were in a stalemate where, like, nothing was really moving. All of a sudden, things changed, and I was like, I didn't do anything. What. Can you tell me what the answer was? Because I surely didn't have it. And she goes, well, I started following these women on Instagram. I just changed my feed. She's like, I just decided I'm gonna follow, like, 20 of these people unfollowed a bunch of, like, parenting and, like, fitness stuff to, like, get my feed to be just brainwashing of the right flavor. And she goes, Cause I. I saw this one thing that really resonated with me. I was like, oh, what was it? And so there's these decluttering coaches on Instagram. I don't know if you've seen this. They have, like, millions of followers.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

And there's women that are just helping other women, like, kind of figure out how to, like, think about decluttering their house. It's not even strategy, right? Because the answer's obvious. Put the shit in a bag and get rid of it.

[B]

It's mostly personal. It's like, how to feel about, like, saying goodbye to something that, like, your baby used to play with.

[A]

Exactly. Or you spent money on it, and now you feel like it's wasteful to get rid of it.

[B]

It's sort of like how personal finance is more personal than finance. It's like, cleaning is more like dealing with the inside, you know? Caesar Milan, the dog trainer, says. He goes, I trained the human, and we rehabilitate the dog.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. That. That's so true. And so she was talking about, like, there was one Instagram reel she saw where the woman was walking around the house, and she goes, you know, I've been keeping all this stuff for my kids because I want them to. I'm trying to, like, make sure they have everything they might need, but they don't have me anymore. Because now when I walk around, I just see. I did. My brain is just thinking, oh, I gotta pick those up. Oh, I need to put that away. Oh, I really want to reorganize the shelf. Oh, I've been meaning to get to this. Like, oh, my God. And then she's like, another one was. Are you ashamed? Like, do you. Does panic come inside you when somebody offers to, like, come over or do a play date? Like, the idea of having guests over, does it panic in you? Like, that's not what your home is supposed to feel like. So whatever upside you thought this is

[B]

giving you, that's A great one.

[A]

Think about the panic that you feel. And my wife is like, dude, every time, like, when we go to school, drop off, we have the Tesla with, like, the wings. And so when you open the door, it's like such a, it's like, so open house for, like, our car. And our car is like, there's goldfish and Cheetos and four soccer balls and 19 shoes in the back of the car. Right? Like, this is like, we have three kids, three car seats. It's a, it's a madhouse back there. And so she's like, let's drop off over here at the corner. I'm like, what the hell?

[B]

Why?

[A]

She's like, because I don't want anyone to say, kids, get out the other door. So nobody sees the window when the window when the creators on Instagram started to speak to those moments and those fears, which is the equivalent of you volunteering to take the photo so that you're not in it. Then all of a sudden, the flip switched. I could see the power of the right sentence that just hits the nerve, that literally just rewires someone's behavior.

[B]

That's a great story. I'll be eager to see how long that lasts because that potentially could be life changing.

[A]

Yeah, hopefully it is, because it's pretty traumatizing to be like, I did this. Like, we, this is hilarious. We've been, like, house hunting. So, like, we're seeing all these really nice houses that are, like, staged. And every time we go in, I'm like, yeah, but you got to remember, we're going to ruin all this. We don't live like this. Like, this is like a perfectly staged, minimal house. Yeah.

[B]

It's like when you go, like, shopping for clothes, you're like, picture that with a mustard stain on it. Do you still like it?

[A]

Do you have mannequins with bellies? Because I'd like to see what this looks like. And so, so then with, with our house, I looked up our old like, like Zillow photos of when the house right before this same house we're in before we moved in. And I was like, what do you think of this house? And it looks amazing.

[B]

Oh, that's so funny.

[A]

We ruined this. This already was epic. We, we messed it up. And so, you know, you have to assault reality.

[B]

Yeah, I, I, it's near and dear to my heart, this whole clutter thing. I argue with my wife about that stuff all the time too. And one of the reasons I like living in New York is I make these excuse. I'VE got a small apartment. You guys can't get me anything, right? And it's like, not that small. But dude, the, the clutter thing bothers me. It. It kills me. It.

[A]

Like when I walked into my house, like the entry, you open the door, it's like whatever, 30 foot ceil. Because should be so beautiful. Instead we had a giant pink like UFC Octagon trampoline just in the middle of the house. And the kids did love it. It was pretty fun. But like, damn, man. Like, we went. Where do we go wrong?

[B]

It's. It's Amazon, man. But being able to buy shit so easily online, I think that, like, if I was. I don't think this would land as well, but if I was like an influencer in this space, it would be about like, consumerism and like, and like showing people. Like, for example, if I was to get you, if I was going to show you why you should eat healthier, you could do a bunch of like, visualizations. But like, I could just show you, like, look, when you go to the movies and, and you get popcorn, I could just, I could tell you that they put a hundred grams of butter on it. Or I could just show you a block of fat. And like, that's 100 grams, right? And that is what is on here. For this, I could be like, here's your bill. Like, here's the money that you would have saved not buying this stuff. You know what I mean? Like, right. That wouldn't land as good. But that's how I think about where I'm like, oh my God, it's so much waste. Or I'll be like, a kid in China made this. It flew over on an airplane. It got into this factory. It went to this ups. Like, that's where it hurts me. I'm like, all this energy, it's just wasted. I hate the waste. And so that's what lands at me when I think of like, the waste. But that's. That's a significantly less popular emotion.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Right. But this is stuff is fun. If you want to learn more about this stuff. My favorite book on this topic is Made to Stick by Chip Heath. It's two brothers from Stanford, and they do the best job of showing like five ways that you can make ideas stick with people. And I'm kind of like thinking, I'm going to reread that.

[A]

I've read that and I've read Positioning, by the way, even though they come highly recommended. I actually did not think either was great. There's some books you Read, and you're like, holy shit. Every page is like, you want to frame it. That's not how I felt at all about those books. Also, they're pretty old, so the examples they'll give are not as relevant. I think this is something you just have to actually study the ground truth ads, and you have to notice what resonates. You have to start paying attention, and you start collecting for yourself. The books can provide some general frameworks, but I personally didn't think that either of them was good enough to feel like I actually understood it.

[B]

Okay, well, agree to disagree. No.

[A]

Well, you do both, right? You have a pretty strong swipe file and for this sort of thing, and you've been doing that for 15, 20 years now.

[B]

I thought Made to Stick was cool because it just put frameworks, but, like, there's, like, classic ones that you see. And some of them are funny where it's like, this person is this rich. It's like, well, what does a trillion mean? Well, it's an. And then you do, like, the seconds thing. I think I. I told you the story where like, a million is, like, 72 hours, a billion is, like 82 weeks, and then a trillion is 32 years. Like, there's, like, ways to, like, break things down that are far more tangible. And that's what I learned from what's it called? Made to Stick.

[A]

Didn't stay.

[B]

Almost. Almost.

[A]

Almost lost that one.

[B]

That's like my joke when I. It's like, that's a dad joke when people say. I'll say they could tell I've got bad hearing, and they go, do you have bad hearing? I go, huh? It's never funny. No one has ever laughed.

[A]

I'll give it to you.

[B]

All right, that's it. That's the pod.

[A]

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like, no days off on a road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast, because if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, or hearing keynote presentations, or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.